


The secret chord

by ShariDeschain



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 22:50:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18061694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: “I looked for you”, Five says, and he’s screaming and whispering at the same time. He knows that the world will end with the violin’s last chord and he needs to tell this to her, he needs to make her understand.





	The secret chord

Somewhere between his thirtieth and thirty-fifth birthday, Five had come to the conclusion that reality did not really exist. It couldn’t. 

Reality, as it is, is just the immediate consequence of a series of irrelevant and often disconnected actions, and given the extreme variability of a person’s behaviour it would be illogical to assume that there is only one reality to live in. No, there have to be _a lot_ of them, and they all stand one jump away from each other.

One jump, and he’s thirteen, really thirteen, and he never tries time traveling. 

One jump, and he’s still thirteen, and his siblings are sixteen and still all alive.

One jump, and he’s there to save Ben.

One jump, and he dies before he can come back to save them all.

One jump, and he’s here, in this theatre, and he was so close to stop the whole thing, but he’s failed, and now it’s just him and Vanya, and the world outside is collapsing on itself, the earth is shaking and the buildings are crumbling down, their house is a pile of ruins and their siblings are dead bodies in the dust. 

But Vanya’s playing her violin with her eyes closed and a smile on her lips, and the music is just so _beautiful_. They’re the last two living being on a dying planet and Five shouldn’t be here in the first place but _he is_ , and he’s crying, not because he’s mourning his brothers and sister ― god knows for how long he mourned them already, maybe he never stopped, not even when he saw them alive again ― no, he’s crying because the Earth is ending in minutes and it has the best background music a dying planet could ask for.

Has Vanya always been so good at playing? He can’t remember. Childhood is a long lost memory that time and loneliness have gnawed away from him.

“I looked for you”, Five says, and he’s screaming and whispering at the same time. He knows that the world will end with the violin’s last chord and he needs to tell this to her, he needs to make her understand. He loved her. He loved them all. He still does.

“You were not at the house”, he goes on, and Vanya doesn’t look at him, but he knows she’s listening. “You were not with them and I looked for you everywhere, but I couldn’t find your body and I knew you were still alive.”

For years he had looked for her. Because why not?

Back then he had not known that she had been the cause of everything, but now he does. And it makes no sense. She ended the world but she survived. Then why had he never found her? Where was she? The idea of never having been alone in his post-apocalyptic future is, for some reason, even more frightening than the memory of the decades spent by himself.

“Were you there?”, he yells, and he’s angry now, even though he’s still crying, and it’s stupid because this Vanya cannot answer, this Vanya cannot know. But this Vanya is all he’s got, and she’s killed their siblings, and she’s going to kill him, and she had left him alone. “Answer me! Were you there with me?”

Vanya doesn’t answer. She only opens her eyes when she stops playing, and as the last vibration of her bow stretches towards Five, she winks. Afterwards there’s only darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the COWT9 and [this tumblr prompt](https://unavenged-robin.tumblr.com/post/183321327198/hargreeves-siblings-who-ends-up-crying-at-vanyas)


End file.
